Date:  Tue, 9 Dec 1997 09:03:55 -0500
From:  Gregory {Greg} Downing <downingg[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]IS2.NYU.EDU>
Subject: Re: ADS-L; Hazard; Legal Sharks; Linguistics Dictionary; Dog Names

At 02:10 AM 12/9/97 EST, you wrote:
>  I just bought THE CONCISE OXFORD DICTIONARY OF LINGUISTICS by Peter
>Matthews (1997, Oxford University Press, paperback, 410 pages, $13.95). It's
>more comprehensive (3,000 entries), but less in-depth than Crystal's
>dictionary. Why isn't anyone doing a CD-ROM linguistics dictionary?
>

Very few CD-ROM's have made money to date, I'm told by people who work in
and with the industry (Silicon Alley in downtown NYC; NYU's Interactive
Telecommunications program). Many have instead been done as give-aways
included with some hardware or software purchase. But DVD's (digital video
disks) are coming at this point, and can hold much more than a CD-ROM. But
whether DVD will prove to be a financially viable technology is another
issue. It seems to me that the advantages of CD-ROM/DVD (search capability
etc.) are great. For example, you can search the entire OED2 text (not just
headwords) looking for a word or collocation of phrase in about 15 seconds.
But until individuals and institutions buy CD-ROM's/DVD's enough so that
they make back their investment plus some kind of profit for those sinking
effort and money into them, the list of available titles will remain small.

Gregory {Greg} Downing, at greg.downing[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]nyu.edu or downingg[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]is2.nyu.edu